Obama leaves Trinity church
He says he and his wife are ending their long relationship with the Chicago church because of remarks from the pulpit, which had become a distraction to the campaign.
ABERDEEN, S.D. — Barack Obama announced Saturday that he and his wife had resigned as members of their Chicago church in the wake of controversial remarks from its pulpit that have become a serious distraction to his presidential campaign.
In a letter dated Friday to the pastor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, had come to the decision "with some sadness." But they said their relations with Trinity United Church of Christ "had been strained by the divisive statements" of the retiring pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., "which sharply conflict with our own views."
The Illinois senator's decision to break with the church that he has credited with shaping his faith came after months of controversy over racially charged remarks Wright made to the 8,000-member congregation on Chicago's South Side.
His announcement came on a busy day as Democratic officials settled the thorny issue of how to count disputed Florida and Michigan delegates, giving each half a vote. That puts Obama within reach of clinching the nomination in the last primaries, today in Puerto Rico and on Tuesday in South Dakota and Montana.
In a news conference after a campaign stop in this prairie town, Obama cited the uproar over inflammatory remarks from the pulpit last week by Father Michael Pfleger, a Catholic priest who appeared as a guest speaker at the church.
Pfleger mocked Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying she was a white elitist who felt entitled to the nomination and was annoyed that "there's a black man stealing my show."
Obama described Pfleger, the white pastor of a largely African American parish in Chicago, as a friend who "made offensive statements that have no place in our politics and in the pulpit, that unfairly mocked and criticized Sen. Clinton in ways that I think are unacceptable."
The grainy video of Pfleger shouting to a packed church has circulated widely on the Internet and renewed the focus on Wright, whose incendiary sermons enveloped the campaign in months past. Wright can be seen in Internet videos shouting "God damn America" and asserting that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were brought on by U.S. foreign policy.
"We don't want to have to answer for everything that's stated in a church," Obama told reporters in South Dakota. "On the other hand, we also don't want a church subjected to the scrutiny that a presidential campaign legitimately undergoes."
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